Watch out for side effect bug on Change Continuous Data (It Scales Time!)

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mhschmieder
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Watch out for side effect bug on Change Continuous Data (It Scales Time!)

Post by mhschmieder »

I can't remember if this bug crept into DP 11.21 or the still-recent previous update.

Fortunately, it seems limited to a specific set of user workflow conditions.

If you select MIDI CC's in Tracks View using the mouse, usually snapping to the bar lines and extending at least a bit past the actual CC's, and the use Region->Change Continuous Data to add or subtract from the CC's values, there is a side effect that DP also applies a time scale to stretch the selected CC MIDI Events to exactly fill the boundaries of the mouse selection.

This doesn't happen if you select the MIDI CC's in the Event List instead, or if you select one displayed block at a time in Tracks View rather than sliding the mouse past the beginning and/or end of one or more blocks.

By blocks, I mean the rendering in DP, as it has historically used some criteria to decide when to draw a rectangle to represent a cluster of information within a time range. As MIDI CC's don't have "note length", I've always found it a bit mysterious how DP decides when to make the rectangle boundaries.

As I now keep most CC's other than CC 64 (sustain pedal) on separate tracks, I do not know if this bug also happens if you select a combination of notes and CC's.

The first time it happened, I didn't notice until I had made a lot of other edits, so I had to painstakingly realign a gazillion CC1's for dynamics control of Spitfire and VSL. Fortunately, they don't have to line up with the note attack, but if you have fast passages, you might apply the dynamic to the wrong note, so it's best to avoid this bug by not using the workflow that triggers it!
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